I've always wanted to donate more to SETI@Home, but being a Canadian, I didn't think it would be tax-deductible. Amazingly I happened to stumble on this page and found I was incorrect. Yes, donations to SETI@Home are tax-deductible for Canadians if they are made through UC Berkeley.

The Green Bank Project is set to start early next year, and will bring a new radio telescope's data online for us to analyze. A new SETI@Home receiver at the Robert C. Byrd telescope at Green Bank (which is, incidentally, one of the largest, if not the largest, movable terrestrial objects ever built) will search for signals from star systems with extrasolar planets discovered by NASA's Kepler mission.

As always, our help is needed to get this underway by providing one of the critical components for the project. The terabytes of data collected need to be transported safely to SETI@Home's Berkeley Space Sciences Lab for processing and distribution to us to analyze. Due to the prohibitive cost and/or unavailablity of bandwidth at this location preventing using the internet for this, we need the Green Bank Data Transport Package, an array of 20 x 2 Terabyte hard drives, and a rugged, waterproof case to transport them in.

Currently, the GPU Users' Group has collected $800 of the $2660 required for this, leaving $1860 left to raise.

In this weekend challenge, I will match other SETI@Home contributors' donations up to half of the required amount minus overage, so that the exact total of $1860 is reached. So, if donations are:

$0 to $930, I will contribute the same amount in one donation.

>$930, I will contribute $1860 - Donations, so that the total is $1860.

Why is this important?

Firstly, the Green Bank observatory may lose its funding due to proposed cuts. As the SETI@Home team has already booked time there and only a few components of the project are still required, it is vital that the project be able to start on schedule in order not to miss out on any observations. We don't know how long this facility may be available, as although the current proposal is complete defunding in five years, funding may be cut back severely before then. So, let's not waste any time getting started!

Secondly, I think that this project has a proportionately higher chance of succeeding than SETI@Home "classic" for the amount of observations and crunching, given that it is a targeted search, whereas the SETI@Home "classic" recorders perform a semi-random search and go "along for the ride" at whatever Arecibo happens to be observing. It could be listening to "nothing", ie no stars or galaxies or other point radio sources, such as when performing Dr. Korpela's neutral hydrogen survey. It could be listening to an object too far away (which the vast majority are) to receive intelligent signals from, or at a star without planets, or at an object that isn't a star at all... a huge amount of data must be collected and processed to have the hope of any with a possible life-bearing world in it.

In contrast, the Green Bank Project will be a directed search, listening to star systems that are nearby, confirmed to have planets, and whose planets are in the "Goldilocks zone" (not too hot, not too cold) ie the right temperature for liquid water to exist. Whereas Arecibo is a fixed-dish, the Robert C. Byrd telescope can tilt completely on its side, for a far wider field of coverage (120 degrees vs. Arecibo's 40 degrees.) Combined with Green Bank's more northerly latitude, and much larger area of sky coverage, a vast number of stars and their potential planets that were previously unobservable can now be investigated.

How can you contribute?

There are two ways to contribute. The recommended way, unless you are both donating from outside the U.S. and have confirmed that donations to UC Berkeley are tax-deductible is to donate though the GPU Users' Group (GPPUG). GPUUG is registered as a 501(c) charitable foundation, so for U.S. residents, or residents of countries that recognize U.S. charitable foundations, your donation will be completely tax-deductible.
This is the recommended way of donating because GPUUG is able to obtain discounts and specials on hardware purchases.

If, and only if, you are donating from outside the U.S. and donations to UC Berkeley are tax deductible for you (and you would like to take advantage of this) then you should donate to UC Berkeley through the SETI@Home donations page. This is the route I will be taking, as noted above, and I recommend other Canadians also take, as it has been verified that this donation will be fully tax-deductible.Important info for donations through Berkeley::
1) At the end of the Berkeley donation form there is a text field called Special instructions or designations for this gift. Put GBTP in this field so that the funds are properly earmarked for this project.
2) Post a reply in this thread with your donation's confirmation number and amount so that I can track and update the totals. Slavac of the GPUUG will be updating me on donations made through there.

How long will this challenge last?

It will run from approx. 20h00 EDT on Friday October 8th until 23h59 EDT Monday October 12th. I'll monitor and update the totals as I can, while still trying to visit family and other Thanksgiving things! At the conclusion, I'll make my donation, as detailed above, matching your donations' total from $0 to $930 or making up the difference from $1,860 if you've gone over $930. I'm just a working IT guy in an apartment, so I won't complain about any overage. ;^)

I thank you for any and all contributions... no donation is too big or too small!

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”--- Margaret Mead

We're very excited to be working with interested donors such as Kevin in order to provide hardware, software and funds to SETI. With each donation we receive, we strengthen the infrastructure of the project and ultimately can do more science.

Also as of the time of this post, we've already taken in $100 from Mrs. Korpela which leaves us at $1680 to raise.

Thanks everyone for your interest. I'm hoping this fundraiser is a big success so we can utilize similar methods for our upcoming projects.

If you have any questions about this fundraiser, don't hesitate to email me at the address below.

$830 (or more if you want to save me some cash... heh) left to go.“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”--- Margaret Mead

That is absolutely staggering and thank you! I hope you can at least write some of that off. :^)

Unbelievable... only a few hours into this (with three days allotted) and we're already 80% done, with only $180 left to raise (and of course, any overage that only I will be thankful for!)“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”--- Margaret Mead

We've already overshot the total $1860 by $174 and I haven't had to donate anything yet!

So, anything over $1860 is going to this project: The Hydrogen Survey / SETI Storage Array
Please use that link to donate from now on for donations through GPUUG! If you're donating through the Berkeley donation page in the Special instructions or designations for this gift text field, please put HI so that it's earmarked properly.

Since there's no more to donate to for the Green Bank Data Transport project, I'll be contributing to this one instead. Try to leave me something to do. ;^)“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”--- Margaret Mead

As we have surpassed our goal for the Green Bank Telescope Array, Mr. Kevvy has offered to continue his matching pledge onto our Hydrogen Array Project.

This array has two functions:

1. One portion of the JBOD will provide storage requirements for Dr. Korpela's Hydrogen Survey.

2. The remaining portion will serve as a test bed for on site storage for SETI at Home. Should the on site storage work out like we're hoping, we'll be able to significantly reduce the data storage costs for SETI by a large factor.

Needs: At the time of this post we currently need to fund only 15 2TB drives to finish out this project. The total cost we need to raise is $1675.00 to fund these remaining drives.

What can I say... this fundraising weekend has completely exceeded my expectations.

I expected that maybe we'd collect $930 for the Green Bank Data Transport package in three days. Instead, that was collected in only a few hours, and we've taken in...

$3419.43

Not only was the Green Bank Package taken care of completely by donors without me having to match donations, but we're only a few hundred from also getting the Hydrogen Array + SETI Storage System, and it isn't even Monday yet! This would leave me nothing to kick in for.

The original promise was that I would match contributions up to $930, half of the original amount required for the Green Bank Package. Even though far less than this is now required, I would be doing a disservice to this awesomely generous community if I did any less, so...

Thank you for your gift of $930.00 via Visa on 10/07/2012.
Your gift was assigned to the following areas:

SETI@home - $930.00

Your confirmation number is:
98420

Any excess funds donated through GPUUG can be put to work on the next project by Slavac, who I'd like to thank for doing an amazing and diligent job tracking all the donations while I was busy with other things this weekend.

Thank you again to everyone who donated!“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”--- Margaret Mead

We've ordered all of the above (minus the drives for SETI to order) as of today. You can see these purchases by visiting http://www.gpuug.org/purchases

That wraps up this fundraiser for the weekend. I'd like to extend a warm thank you to everyone who helped make this fundraiser a huge success. In one fell swoop, thanks to the initiative of Mr. Kevvy we have finished two projects for SETI at Home.

_______________________________________________________________

What this fundraiser means for the project:

Green Bank:

SETI at Home will now have 20 2TB hard drives (total of 40TB) with which to transport data between our observation telescopes and the SETI labs. These drives specifically are Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 2TB 7200RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Drives.

Thanks to this fundraiser they will also have a Turtle Hard Drive Transport case which is essentially a Pelican case specifically designed for 20 hard drives at a go. We've tested these cases now for several months and thus far they've performed great. They're a huge improvement over our standard cardboard and foam transport boxes. This case is specifically the case found at this link http://www.turtlecase.com/productdetails.aspx?productid=603

Hydrogen / SETI Storage Array:

We've purchased the remaining 16 hard drives for the SETI Hydrogen / Storage array. For those unaware, this array will utilize one partition of drives to fulfill the needs of the lab's Hydrogen Array. The other partition will serve as a test bed for SETI Data Storage.

Our hopes are that in house data storage will be successful. If so, we will be moving toward increasing our in house data storage for SETI at Home, a prospect which will save the lab a significant amount of money which in turn will free up funding for other improvements in the lab.

Prior to this Weekend Fundraiser, we had purchased 20 drives for the Hydrogen / Storage array and when coupled with today's purchases, we've completely filled the JBOD.

I'd like to sincerely thank Mr. Kevvy for spearheading this fundraising weekend and our wonderful donors for contributing a stunning amount of funds. It makes me proud to see so many donors helping to improve the infrastructure of this project.